Dreadnought: The Hero Shooter For Giant Spaceships

Overwatch: Galactica

By Jon Ryan -
May 16, 2017, 12:37 p.m.

Imagine a fleet of starships comprised of science fiction's most famous vessels. The massive Galacticafloating alongside the Millenium Falcon while Han bobs around a nearby Starfleet Medical Cruiser. This is the idea behind Dreadnought - that each player's ship fills the archetypal role of a team member that would otherwise be a uniquely specialized character.

Instead of playing as The Heavy or Reinheardt, for example, I climbed into the captain's chair of a 1/4 mile-long Destroyer-class starship. And while it took a few lives to get the hang of piloting my massive vessel, this concept worked remarkably well. There are five classes of ships to play as: two combination Tank / DPS roles, my Destroyer and the titular Dreadnought, the long-range sniper-esque Artillery Cruiser, the Technical Cruiser that can remotely repair nearby ships, and lastly the Corvettes, which while they may not have the biggest guns or thickest armor, can fly (literal) circles around larger ships and act as a scout for the rest of the team.

The half space-sim half shooter has been in beta on PC since last year, and is releasing Playstation 4 later this year. Players captain their ship, managing crews and diverting energy to systems like engines thrusters, weapons and shields, all while simultaneously trying to decimate the enemy fleet. Though it wasn't as fast-paced as other FPS or air combat sims, each round of Team Deathmatch was a fun exercise in both teamwork and solo ship-to-ship combat - though the former was definitely the more successful strategy.

As our team's corvette dashed around the battlefield keeping our opponents occupied and our artillery cruiser flung bombardments from afar, I lumbered in the Bernice (of course I named my ship- wouldn't you?) across the midfield of the lush green planet we were over, drawing as much fire as I could while dishing out as much damage as possible. Thanks to some quality support from the commander of our tactical cruiser, we were able to keep this up until our artillery cruiser managed to wipe nearly half their team before they could respawn.

There was also a surprisingly vast array of customization options (for a free-to-play title) when building your fleet. Pick your ship's class, then your subclass, then choose the abilities to train your officers in, which lets you customize your play style even further. For example, you may take a light variant of the Corvette, which is practically the fastest subclass in the fleet already, and equip it with a Blink Warp Drive that allows you to teleport across short distances, along with an energy conserving thrust modifier and you've got a ship that can dance circles around an enemy dreadnought or cruiser. Or, take that same light corvette and give it a cloaking unit and various weapons that target enemy defense systems, you've converted it into an infiltrator that can weaken enemy fleets from with before your full force arrives on the battlefield. These upgrades are unlocked by leveling up your ships and purchased with in-game currency, alongside a massive slew of cosmetic items like hull variants, color schemes decals and more that can be used to make each individual ship your own - though it's real-world currency that pays for the vanity items, along with the unique lore-based pre-customized Hero ships.

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During our demo we played a few matches of the team deathmatch mode, the main mode on the PC version of the game - which has been in open beta for some time - but even the developers we played with were still getting used to using Playstation's Dual-Shock 4 to pilot their ships. We also played through several rounds of Havoc, the exclusive mode coming to the PS4 version. Similar to Gears of War's infamous horde mode, Havoc pits you and your fellow captains against relentless waves of increasingly more dangerous enemy NPC ships. It was a satisfying change-up after our previous fights against real-world opponents, and I'm pleased to say that our rag-tag crew even managed to bring down a massive Elite enemy dreadnought (think "boss ship") before finally succumbing to the enemy horde.